The Civic Governance of Food Distribution: Lessons from the Public Market - Linda Aleci

The history of urban food systems— the circulation of food through chains of production and consumption—can be written as the struggle between municipalities and private interests to control networks of supply and distribution. Now, as supermarkets leave cities in growing numbers, the right to food, and whose responsibility it is to assure food access, is more pressing than ever. What lessons can we find in the life and death—and rebirth—of publicly owned and operated markets, and the history of civic efforts to govern food distribution?

Historian Linda Aleci (Ph.D. Princeton University) teaches at Franklin & Marshall College in Lancaster, PA, and is an affiliated scholar with the Floyd Institute for Public Policy. Her research, which focuses on cities and the historical imagination, and urban food systems, seeks to connect academic scholarship with public policy and planning. Her preservation plan for Lancaster Central Market was awarded the American Planning Association National Planning Excellence Award in Urban Design in 2013.